


Apodeixis

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Iron Lords as teachers, brand-new city age, miscellaneous baby warlocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 08:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18796822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: The young Warlocks of the City need teaching.





	Apodeixis

“Lord Timur,” Felwinter says, “our guest for the day.”

His students— Warlocks, mostly short-tailed— watch them both warily. Timur’s smile is too wide to set them at ease, and Felwinter does nothing but project the careful ambivalence he always does while in front of just-Risen. He watches them whisper to themselves on the grass at the base of the Peak, their Light bordered with uncertainty. 

“Students,” Timur says, by way of greeting. “Your teacher has asked me here to help explain to you the other avenues your Light can travel.” He grabs the artifact hanging around his neck as he speaks, gravitates upwards so that the tips of his boots hang over the wild grass. Arc Light crackles down his arm into his free hand, and as he waves it the energy fizzles outwards. 

The motion sets the crowd murmuring. Stormcallers are rare, few enough that the newest Lights have only heard scattered rumors. Most of these Guardians can only call to the void; Skorri has monopolized the natural Sunsingers, eager to teach them self-resurrection and music theory. 

Timur smiles again, pleased at the startled awe. The dearth of born-attuned Stormcallers has rendered him aimless on training days. Felwinter’s oldest apprentices have met Timur already, on the days where he decides to attend the advanced Voidwalkers’ class and fling axion bolts at Ashraven from across the field. 

“Now,” he says, blinking slow, “who will take the first attempt?” 

Felwinter catches the fear in the youngest Warlocks’ eyes, shuts his throat-lights off to keep them from glowing cobalt with laughter. So many of them know the Iron Lords only through whispers, by the teachings of the Speaker and Skorri’s songs. They have built up such a legend that here is a group of Warlocks, most less than a season old, faltering in the face of a man who spends afternoons eating lunch with Skorri and Jolder, who turns shanks into servants and lets them wander the Temple’s halls. 

It takes a good minute until one of the more spirited students weighs her odds and steps forward. She’d been risen on Mars, Felwinter remembers idly, and has some field experience as a result; Timur must not look so intimidating when compared to an angry Centurion. The other students follow her lead, emboldened, and Felwinter settles back to watch them practice. 

It only takes a few hours before the older students are forming neat spheres of Arc Light, shaping them carefully into grenades and small rifts. Skorri arrives shortly after with her own group, showing the struggling Risen her own technique to call the lightning down. 

“Now,” she says, Arc bolts snapping between her fingers, “don’t think of Arc as a modification of your extant Light. It’s something _other,_ something different you have to call on.” She flings her hands upwards, and the Arc energy vanishes; as she moves them downwards again, they light up with Solar flame. “Feel where that difference begins, and call on it.” 

Idly, Felwinter follows the trail of Arc up his hands through his shoulders. He can call the storm through sheer necessity, but Timur and Skorri are at ease within it. It’s that comfort that makes them invaluable on days like these, when his students are shown yet another difficult path before they’ve even mastered the first. Some of these Guardians will fall into the trance, just as some will find mastery in more traditional studies. Even now, as he watches a Sunsinger’s storm grenade fizzle, sees her fling out a radiant wing in frustration, he can watch aptitudes form. 

The day goes on, and their students are called away to patrols or strike observations. By lunchtime, only a few are left— the most adept, Felwinter notices, the ones that want to harness this energy before it slips away from them. 

Skorri leaves to find Jolder and something to eat. Timur’s stolen the rest of his students, running them through simple exercises that leave their robes scorched.

A few of Skorri’s Sunsingers are taskless in her absence. Felwinter decides to teach them how to Blink. They all respond eagerly, having seen the latest Crucible highlights filled with flashy Hunters just picking up the strategy. 

“Jump, and then focus on where you want to be,” he says, standing sure-footed on the grass and snowmelt. “Space will open for you.” He jumps towards them, pulls a hand towards his chest as he Blinks through them, lands neatly a couple yards from the pair of Voidwalkers Timur’s still instructing. Neither startle like the Sunsingers do; they’re already able to shortcut reality through movement. 

Timur flings staticky Light his way, not looking away from his conversation with the pair. Felwinter lets his optics flash annoyed-amused as he Blinks out of the way, landing back where he began. The Sunsingers look eager to try their new trick out for themselves, if only so they can use it as a scare tactic among the other young Guardians. 

Felwinter keeps an eye on his group, and Timur’s pair wander over to help with their Blink techniques, and then Timur glides over to talk about Golden Age technology and the books Tyra had found on sale at the Bazaar. Skorri returns with Jolder and a basket of sandwiches. 

They eat, Skorri sprawled out in the grass and humming while she teaches her students how to shield themselves. Jolder does her stretches, shows the just-Risen how to angle their bodies just so to Blink into a shoulder charge. 

Timur’s few students arrive for their lesson, and he holds class on a green-gold picnic blanket in the shadow of the Peak. They talk of the Traveler and what it brought, and Felwinter bickers over definitions and Collapse-theory until the meal is done. 

“Well,” Skorri says to her Sunsingers, yawning as she sits up, “I think we’re done for the day. I’ll see you all in a week— don’t get killed before then. I don’t want to have to get everyone to make mourning songs.” 

Jolder laughs at that, loud enough to startle the young Warlocks sitting near her. She laughs even louder when she notices, apologizes through waves of snorts that make the ground beneath her shake. She rises to her feet once it’s subsided, hauls Skorri up with her. She’s gentler with the students as she helps them up, though Felwinter catches one rubbing at his forearm once she’s done. 

Timur rolls onto his back as Jolder helps the Warlocks up, arms stretching up into the cloudless sky. Felwinter gets to his feet slowly, feels the whirr of his joints as they shift and readjust. He offers a hand to Timur, who hauls himself up with it. 

“Thank you for helping instruct the others,” Felwinter says to his two remaining students, turning to incline his head towards them. They’d both listened intently to Timur’s lecture on the grass, then to his and Felwinter’s circular arguments on Light and past lives and the nature of being Risen. Timur’s own students are wandering over to give their goodbyes before their jumpships land. 

Jolder heads to the Peak to find Radegast for patrol, Skorri following her back up the mountain. The students disperse alongside them, most returning to the City for research or more training or sleep. Skorri waves, yells her goodbyes, tells them not to skip dinner. Felwinter nods, throat glowing yellow.

He'd turned his lights back on once they’d all retired to the ground, the need for projected ambivalence towards the youngest Warlocks outweighed by their absence and his desire to flick dark green light at Timur every time he said something nigh-incomprehensible to his students. They’d been glowing a steady blue for most of the afternoon; he’d seen one of his students trying to discreetly ask one of the Exo Sunsingers what the color meant. 

“Quite a lot accomplished today,” Timur says, watching the last jumpship disappear over the mountain range. 

Felwinter hums. “They’re all coming along well.” He’s quiet for a few slow minutes, thinking about the young Risen spread across the field. It’s infinitely better than his own scrambled second (third?) upbringing, something he can appreciate even as his students struggle to control their own might. 

The thought of his first few desperate months leads him to the Mothyards, which leads him to Timur, and he casts a sidelong glance at him. “We still need to sort through those Bray files,” he says, and it’s a transparent invitation but it’s one that will earn him a few more hours of wandering talk. Today has him feeling strange, he thinks; he wasn’t sure that was still something that could happen. He supposes he may as well feel strange, when before all this careful guidance he'd been a Warlord. 

It’s a nice thing, all of it— the City, the steady influx of new Risen, the lessened violent infighting, the trail they’re following that will lead them to something impossible to imagine. 

“We’re building a world for them,” Silimar says whenever he sees a young Guardian. With any luck, Felwinter thinks, they won’t break it.

**Author's Note:**

> I remembered to get back on tumblr after ~five months! @allteacher for any prompts/questions/Eris talk/etc. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments appreciated, as always. <3


End file.
